Method Scope

get_object_vars() - will only return the properties that can be accessed from the current scope. Therefore, it cannot access private or static properties of a child class.

Option 1: Adjust Visibility

From the video we adjusted the visibility to control which properties are used.

protected $description; // accessible
protected static $allowed_tags; // not accessible

Option 2: Extend Method

To extend the parent function, we would have to merge the arrays from the parent and the child. We still need to make sure that the visibility is correct, $allowed_tags would still need to be "static".

public function toArray()
{
    return array_merge(
        parent::toArray(), 
        get_object_vars($this)
    );
}

Option 3: Manual Properties

We could use the getters to manually return the object properties as an array. This would give us precise control over what is returned, but this also increases the amount of manual work.

public function toArray() {
    $array['id'] = $this->getId();
    $array['title'] = $this->getTitle();
    $array['website'] = $this->getWebsite();
    $array['email'] = $this->getEmail();
    $array['twitter'] = $this->getTwitter();
    return $array;
}

We would then need to extend this class for the child.

public function toArray() {
    parent::toArray();
    $array['description'] = $this->getDescription();
    return $array;
}